


Slow Pony Home

by lesbiankavinsky



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: College AU, F/F, cw for mentions of alcohol use, fluff with some light angst, wow tagging for russian characters is hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7835500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/lesbiankavinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest when the onto the roof banged open and she jerked around to look, hoping it wasn’t a drunken couple, come to make out in the most private place available to them. But it wasn’t, it was just another girl, pretty and weary-looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Pony Home

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song of the same name by The Weepies, you should go listen to it
> 
> Thanks to @dolhokov on tumblr for reading over this!
> 
> Prompt by @danatole: mary/natasha + “somebody save me, i just wanna be loved”

They met on a rooftop. It was a college party, altogether too noisy with too many drunk and sweaty people, and they were both good at finding escape routes.

Mary was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest when the onto the roof banged open and she jerked around to look, hoping it wasn’t a drunken couple, come to make out in the most private place available to them. But it wasn’t, it was just another girl, pretty and weary-looking.

“Oh,” she said, bringing a hand to her throat. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you. The party was just --”

Mary shook her head hastily. “No, don’t worry. You won’t bother me.”

The girl came and sat down next to her.

“Too much?” Mary asked.

The girl tilted her head. 

“The party – you were saying –“

“Oh,” the girl said. “Yeah. Way too much.” 

“What’s your name?”

“Oh! Oh sorry. I should have introduced myself. I’m Natasha.”

“Mary.”

They shook hands.

“I usually like parties,” Natasha said, looking out over the quad. The lights of the campus made her seem to glow. Mary tried not to stare.

“Not tonight?”

Natasha made a face. “Just broke up. Makes it hard to act all – I don’t know. Carefree and happy and stuff. Well. Not just. It’s been months. I guess it’s just taking me a while to get over it. Which is silly because it was my fault.” She glanced at Mary, then covered her face with one hand, laughing a little. “God. Sorry. Probably more than you wanted to know about a stranger.”

Mary shook her head again. “I don’t mind.” She chewed her lip for a moment then said, “I never like parties. I don’t know why I came to this one. Should’ve known better, really. I don’t like crowds or noise or drinking or – any of it.”

“So why’d you come?”

Mary thought someone else asking that question might have come off as rude or judgmental, but Natasha’s voice was soft and curious, and so she answered honestly. “Because I get lonely.” She felt her throat tighten and cleared it. “Because I keep thinking if I got to the right party I’ll make friends.”

Natasha, unexpectedly, grinned. “Maybe the trick is coming up to the roof.”

Mary returned the smile, slow and cautious, as different as possible from Natasha’s. “I guess so.”

“I get it,” Natasha said, looking back out over the quad. “It can be hard meeting people at college.”

Mary looked at her hands. “I want to be happy here. I was so sure I would be, because home is terrible. But I think that’s part of the problem, because I never got practice at making friends because – I shouldn’t say terrible. It’s not terrible. It’s just – difficult.” She wanted to slap her hand over her mouth. Maybe she was saying all this because Natasha had been so open with her right from the beginning, but still she felt bad.

Her eyes were still on her lap when Natasha’s hand came to rest on Mary’s. Mary looked up to see Natasha’s face, kind and concerned, turned to her. She curled her hands to fists. She didn’t want to worry anyone.

“It’s okay,” Natasha said.

They sat in silence for a while and Mary started wishing Natasha had never come to the roof. She was pretty and seemed sweet, but that made it seem all the more inevitable that she, Mary, would mess up even the beginning of a friendship between them.

Then Natasha said, “I get lonely too. Basically everyone’s pissed at me right now because I messed up so badly with this – the breakup, it’s because I cheated on him. I feel awful about it but I also miss my friends talking to me.”

Mary wasn’t quite sure what Natasha was trying to say, which was apparently clear because Natasha went on, “I guess what I mean is, I could use a friend. And you seem like you could use a friend. And we ended up on this roof together. Stars aligning, maybe." 

Mary fiddled with her necklace. “Maybe.”

 

~~

 

Mary didn’t expect anything to come of it. She and Natasha had a nice conversation after that on the roof, talking about their respective majors (Theology & Ethics for Mary, Comparative Literature for Natasha) and had exchanged phone numbers, but Mary expected Natasha to forget about her.

But the next day she was doing homework at her usual picnic bench in the quad when someone set down two to-go coffee cups in front of her. She looked up to see Natasha with a broad grin on her face.

“Hi,” she said, sitting down across from her. “I brought your favorite kind of latte.”

Mary tried to remember at what point she’d mentioned her Starbucks order last night. It must have been somewhere in their conversation about what they liked to have for breakfast. She took her coffee. “Thanks.”

“You said you liked this spot so I thought I’d find you here,” Natasha said, taking a sip of her own drink.

Mary smiled at her. It was more than skin deep, she thought. Natasha really was _adorable_. She could see the deep purple shade of Natasha’s lipstick on the lid of her coffee cup. _Don’t think about that_ , she told herself.

“So,” Natasha said, peering at Mary’s reading. “Whatcha working on?”

“ _The Life of Anthony_ ,” Mary said. “Early desert father,” she continued quickly, feeling for some reason embarrassed. “He was one of the very early Christians who went out into the desert and just. Thought about God basically.”

“Sounds grim,” Natasha said.

Mary shrugged. “I dunno, it seems kind of nice to me.”

“You like thinking about God?”

“I like thinking about what it means to be good,” Mary said, and Natasha nodded, though it wasn’t clear that she quite understood the difference. She didn’t mind, though.

“I’m going to take a wild gamble,” Natasha said, “and guess that you’re much, much smarter than me.”

Mary laughed, even more embarrassed. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

Natasha shook her head, covering her mouth as she swallowed her coffee. “Oh don’t worry!” She said. “I don’t mind. I don’t really care about being smart. Silly, being at university, maybe, but really I don’t mind so much about it. What I want is –“ she tilted her head, looking down at the surface of the table instead of at Mary, and her tone grew more serious. “What I want is to be loved, you know? To have friends. A sort of a family. Because I miss mine so much.”

Mary held her breath. An insidious voice her head said, _I am so happy to be away from my family._ She pushed the thought away and said, “I think that’s good. In the end that’s what life is about, more than books or grades. She thought, _I could love you_. But she didn’t say it.

Natasha smiled. “What do you want?”

Mary was glad her mouth was hidden behind her coffee cup. The simple question felt like a little explosion inside her, and she thought, _I want to be someone other than myself. I want to stop existing. I want to think only about my ethics textbooks and nothing else, I never want to have a thought of my own, ever again. I want a different past. I want to stop feeling guilty for hating my father. I want to be saved._

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “A good job so I can pay rent for my own apartment.”

Natasha nodded. “That sounds pretty good too.” She twisted her mouth a little. “I hope I’m not distracting you.”

Mary smiled. “I could use a little distraction,” she said.

They talked until an alarm went off on Natasha’s phone and she put her bag back over her shoulder, saying, “I gotta go to my next class. But hey, if you ever need to be distracted again, send me a text.”

Mary was left staring at the spot where Natasha had been. She admittedly had very little experience with such things, but it really seemed like Natasha was _flirting_ with her. Was that possible? She wasn’t sure why someone as gorgeous as Natasha would flirt with someone like herself but… _if you ever need to be distracted_.

It was silly even to think about it. Mary started reading again, but her mind wouldn’t focus. At last she gathered up her books and headed back to her dorm. If she was going to be so distracted by a crush that she couldn’t do her homework, she might as well do it in her room, where she could watch Netflix about it and knit about it and possibly eat the pint of ice cream that she’d bought herself weeks ago as a treat about it. This was absolutely, completely silly. Natasha was getting over a break up and was probably straight and even if she wasn’t she was utterly, impossibly out of Mary’s league. And on top of all of that, she’d literally met Natasha less than 24 hours ago. This was hasty and silly and everything Mary didn’t want to be.

She left her bags at her desk at collapsed into bed and told herself not to think about the shade of Natasha’s lipstick, and thought about it anyway.

 

~~

 

There were plenty of times that Mary needed a distraction, but she never texted Natasha. All the same, Natasha turned up, at her desk in the library, across from her in the cafeteria, on her favorite bench in the park. Mary was amazed by how unself-concious she was about it, as though she never doubted that anyone would be glad to see her. And Mary always was glad to see her. Somehow, with Mary making almost no effort to seek Natasha out, they spent most of their days together. And it was good.

Well, it was almost entirely good. The only bad part of it was that Mary was now absolutely, undeniably in love with Natasha, and she was certain it was hopeless, and it was a constant distraction from her schoolwork. But she couldn’t resent it because even if she wanted more, Natasha was good to her. Natasha was good _for_ her. It was obvious in the way Mary walked taller, spoke up more in class, slept easier. Natasha’s belief that Mary was worthy of time and love was so clear that Mary started believing it a little bit, too.

The fall began to fade into winter and the two girls began to spend much of their time sitting side by side on the neat quilt covering Mary’s bed, reading and talking. It was an easy routine; after classes, Natasha would turn up at Mary’s door with their usual cups of coffee and would stay most of the evening. Natasha never once asked she to pay, and Mary suspected this not because she realized how little money Mary had but because she didn’t mind the expense. It wasn’t an extravagant gift, but it was one Mary appreciated. Like so many things Natasha did, it was a gesture that might have come off as condescending from someone else, but from her it was a simple kindness, born of love and not pity.

By the time the winter holidays came around, they were essentially attached at the hip. Mary wondered sometimes about Natasha’s old friends, but whenever she tried to bring it up, Natasha brushed her off and became embarrassed and awkward.

But the night before they left on vacation, Natasha stayed over in Mary’s room and finally talked about it.

“I’m glad you and I get along so well, and that I met you when I did,” Natasha said. “I would have been really alone this semester if it wasn’t for you.”

Mary wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about this. Sometimes she said things that Mary was certain she meant kindly, but which landed not quite right. Sometimes the way she talked about the luckiness of their meeting when they did made Mary feel almost used, or like a placeholder under Natasha’s old friends came back, or until she found better ones.

But then Natasha went on, “You know, you’re better than any the people I used to be friends with. They all ditched me so completely. I mean, I know I made a mistake. But still, it doesn’t really seem fair. And I realized like, two weeks after meeting you that you wouldn’t do that. You’re not like them. And now I feel like I wasted all of last year with these people who didn’t really care about me, when I should have been with you all along.”

Mary took a moment to be grateful that they were lying in the dark so that Natasha couldn’t see the complicated turn of emotions moving across her face. She certainly wasn’t a placeholder, she thought. It felt so much like an _I love you_ that Mary had to forcefully remind herself that Natasha hadn’t actually said those words. And she remembered Natasha’s words from early that autumn when she’d said, _What I want is to be loved._ It was arguably the best and the worst thing about her. She was puppy-like in her eagerness to please, her evident desire to make the people around her happy. It made her kind, but it also made it difficult for her to understand that there were people in the world with whom she would never be friends, and that didn’t have to be a bad thing. Mary didn’t think she was the right person to teach Natasha that, though. After all, Mary loved her more than almost anything.

Mary reached out across the tiny room to the couch where Natasha lay and Natasha, seeing the shape in the darkness, stretched out to take her hand. “I’m really glad we met, too,” Mary said, grateful once more for the darkness, without which she doubted she would have found a voice to say what she wanted to say. “Honestly, I think I was even more lucky than you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you saved me.”

Natasha laughed. “I didn’t do anything.”

“No,” Mary said, voice serious and insistent. “Maybe it didn’t seem like anything to you, but it did to me. You showed me that I deserved to be loved. I’m not sure I can ever tell you how much that means to me.” 

Natasha squeezed her hand and said softly, “I do, you know. Love you.”

 

~~

 

The campus was covered in snow when they returned. A foot deep, pure and glittering white. Natasha was due to arrive a day after Mary, but hadn’t told her when exactly, so it was without expectation that Mary opened the door on the morning after she returned.

There stood Natasha, face bright with the cold, holding the usual two cups of coffee. Instead of pressing one into Mary’s hand as she usually did, she hurried into the room and set them down on the desk so she could wrap her friend in a hug. Natasha was generally an affectionate person and Mary was used to her touch, but this somehow felt different. The way she held Mary close and buried a hand in her hair was somehow much more intimate than anything she’d done before. When Natasha stepped back, she wrapped her arms around herself and smiled at Mary, narrowing her eyes a little.

“Hi,” she said, and her tone was strangely shy.

“Hi,” Mary said, burying her hands in the pockets of her dress.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Immediately Mary was afraid. Natasha was transferring schools, or she was sick, or she’d realized she didn’t want to be friends with Mary after all. She knew it was irrational, but Mary’s instinct was always to assume the worst.

Natasha laughed. “Don’t look like that,” she said. “It’s not bad. At least, I hope it isn’t. Come, have your coffee, let’s sit.”

In spite of Natasha’s words, Mary sat stiff on the bed, too anxious to take a drink, while Natasha sipped contemplatively. There again was the print of her lipstick on the white plastic lid, a velvety maroon this time.

“Sorry,” Natasha said after a moment. “To say I have something to tell you and then not say anything. I just, I have to work out how to explain it.”

Mary, always a proponent of simplicity, said, “Start at the beginning.”

Natasha settled her coffee between her knees and said, “You know my cousin Sonya?”

Mary nodded, as she’d heard a lot about Sonya. Natasha always said they’d get along if they ever met.

“I told her all about you. I mean I told her a long time before winter break, we talk a lot even when I’m at school. But it was different. Telling her about you in person.” Natasha looked at Mary, narrowing her eyes again. Mary wondered what it was she was trying to see. “Sonya has this theory.”

“Yeah?”

“About you. Or about me. Or about us.”

Mary could feel her heart beat in her ears.

Natasha took another drink and as she put the cup down again, Mary saw that her hand was shaking a little. “Sonya’s a lesbian, you know,” Natasha said, not looking up. “And she says, she’s so oblivious when her friends have crushes on boys. They flirt in front of her and she doesn’t notice anything. They tease her about it but she thinks it’s funny. But she also says, she always knows when her friends have crushes on girls. She says, she knows before they do.” She looked up again and bit her lip. The moment felt stretched like bubblegum. “So anyway, I told her about you, and she told me I talk about you like I’m in love. And I started thinking about that. And I started thinking that maybe I am.”

The moment stopped. Colors at the edges of Mary’s vision frayed. Natasha watched her, and Mary realized she was supposed to say something at this point, only she had no idea what.

Finally, Natasha went on. “So I was wondering. If there was any chance you felt the same way.”

Mary wanted to yell, to scream, to laugh, to say _yes, yes, of course, obviously, yes_. But she had apparently lost her power of speech, her tongue sticking in her mouth. Instead, she reached up and wiped away a bit of Natasha’s lipstick that had smudged and let out a deep, shuddering breath. And then, at last, words. “Truth be told, I’ve been silly in love with you since that first night on the roof.”

Natasha let out a wild, happy laugh and Mary could see the tension leaving her body. “Oh,” she said, “thank god.” And wrapping her hand around the back of Mary’s neck, she pulled in her in to kiss her.


End file.
